TODAY IN HISTORY

TODAY IS THURSDAY, DECEMBER 21, 2017

On this day in history:

1620 - The Mayflower, and its passengers, pilgrims from England, landed at Plymouth Rock, MA.

1817 - Governor Macquarie recommends the use of the name ‘Australia’ instead of New Holland for the continent. 1837 - Eyre attempts the first overlanding venture from Sydney to South Australia. 1879 - Ibsen’s A Doll’s House was first performed in Copenhagen, Denmark, with a revised happy ending.

1894 - The South Australian government becomes one of the first in the world to grant women the right to vote. 1898 - Scientists Pierre and Marie Curie discovered the radioactive element radium. 1913 - Arthur Wynne published a new “word-cross” puzzle in the New York World in England. The name was later changed to “crossword.”

1925 - Eisenstein’s film Battleship Potemkin was first shown in Moscow.

1937 - Walt Disney debuted the first, full-length, animated feature in Hollywood, CA. The

movie was Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.

1945 - US Gen. George S. Patton died in Heidelberg, Germany, of injuries from a car accident. 1948 - The state of Eire (formerly the Irish Free State) declared its independence. 1958 - Charles de Gaulle was elected to a seven-year term as the first president of the Fifth Republic of France.

1971 - The UN Security Council chose Kurt Waldheim to succeed U Thant as secretary-general.

1988 - 270 people were killed when Pan Am Boeing 747 exploded over Lockerbie, Scotland, because of a terrorist attack.

1990 - In a German television interview, Saddam Hussein declared that he would not withdraw from Kuwait by the UN deadline.

1991 - Eleven of the 12 former Soviet republics proclaimed the birth of the Commonwealth of Independent States. 1995 - The city of Bethlehem passed from Israeli to Palestinian control.

1998 - Israel’s parliament voted overwhelmingly for early elections. It was the signal to the demise of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s hard-line government.